Former Owner Acquires DC-Area Hotel for Half Off Last Price

A Charlotte-based hotel investment company reacquired one of its former properties at roughly half the price it sold the building for less than a decade ago.

Lodging Property Trust bought the Hilton Alexandria Old Town in Alexandria, Virginia, for $58 million in an all-cash deal, Bisnow reported. The sale of the 252-key hotel, located less than a half hour outside of the nation’s capital, was disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by seller Ashford Hospitality Trust.

The deal works out to roughly $230,000 per room. HREC Investment Advisors’ Scott Stephens and Mark Morris arranged the deal on behalf of Ashford.

The sale is a bitter pill to swallow for Monty Bennett’s Dallas-based real estate investment trust. In 2018, it acquired the hotel at 1767 King Street from Lodging Property Trust for $111 million. That acquisition came with a $73.5 million nonrecourse mortgage.

Ashford paid back close to half of the loan with the sale, according to its filing. But it’s also expecting to take a “non-recurring loss associated with the disposition of the hotel property,” which sported an operating income deficit of $28.4 million last year.

Neither the buyer nor the seller responded to the outlet’s requests for comment.

Ashford is enduring its fair share of struggles, seeing its New York Stock Exchange price dip 60 percent year-over-year as of the early afternoon on Monday. In August, it was revealed that the firm failed to refinance a $590 million portfolio of 18 hotels, which went to special servicing in June 2024 after a missed balloon payment.

The portfolio’s occupancy reached a low of 33 percent in 2020 and was only at 56 percent as of March 2024, contributing significantly to the financial distress.

Ashford has since pivoted to selling to manage its debt. The company’s portfolio of luxury and upper midscale hotels spans more than 15,000 rooms.

Founded in 2005, Lodging Capital Partners has invested in a portfolio with a valuation above $1.5 billion in the last two decades, according to its website. Last year, it refinanced a 470-key hotel in the District’s Georgetown neighborhood.

— Holden Walter-Warner